:format(webp)/https://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/content/dam/localcommunities/niagara_this_week__niagara_falls/opinion/2022/08/18/chautauqua-the-ripple-effect-of-evil/10506217_William_thomas_wide.jpg)
The Chautauqua Institution near Mayville in western New York offers an amazing nine-week summer experience dedicated to entertainment, enlightenment and the expansion of the human mind.
So begins Chapter Ten of my next book And That’s Why I Love Small Town Living.
Gated during the summer programs, the walking village of Chautauqua has its own everything — playhouse, music hall, opera, symphony, tennis academy, golf course, cinema, ballet, amphitheatre, beach, sailing club, bookstore, library and houses of worship representing seven of the world’s mainstream religions.
My course, Writing Well/Writing Funny’ was well-attended and popular. It was billed as “the funniest course in Chautauqua except for that time in clown class when the instructor’s pants really did catch on fire!” Yes, they even had a course in clowning.
By 11 a.m. every weekday, thousands of Chautauquans would be packed into the grand amphitheatre to listen to speakers like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Thurgood Marshall and Kurt Vonnegut.
And last week, Salman Rushdie.
As a regular at those morning lectures in the open-air amphitheatre for 10 summers, I imagine last week saw a large crowd of graying grandparents and their middle-aged children, mostly from the Cleveland and Pittsburgh areas. This would be the highlight of their day — to absorb the thoughts of a brilliant mind and then, at the end, test it with a question. An excited buzz would be heard from the audience as the guest of honour took the stage accompanied by the host and introducer.
But last week moderator Henry Reese, the head of an American organization that offers residencies to writers facing persecution, did not make it to the microphone to say “Good morning, Chautauqua” and “We’re very excited to have with us today …” because a young man in the front row in black clothes, a black mask and with solid black hate in his heart jumped onto the stage and stabbed Salman Rushdie 10 times; viciously and without hesitation.
Amazingly, the Booker Prize winning author of 26 books and a global defender of the rights of writers and journalists to speak freely without fear of retribution will live; without an eye, with part of a liver and with an arm that likely won’t work anymore.
Rushdie was targeted for his book The Satanic Verses published in 1988 and regarded by radical Muslims in Iran as blaspheming the Prophet Muhammed. An equal opportunity satirist, he also wrote Midnight’s Children in 1981, sharply criticizing India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, but Hindus did not sentence him to ‘death by fatwa’ and place a $3-million bounty on his head as did Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Khomeini.
The 24-year-old messenger of evil who attacked the writer and made good on a 33-year-old religious grudge is evil incarnate, a sick zealot and a for-profit assassin who likely has not read Rushdie’s book. Although Buffalo is 54 miles north of Mayville, hate just dragged The Chautauqua Institute a lot closer to that city’s Tops Friendly Supermarket.
Now, my Chautauqua has been broken, dashed and splashed with blood all over the white Chautauqua Institute logo where Salman Rushdie lay bloody and barely breathing. I don’t think I’ll ever go there again, and my memories of lectures in the amphitheatre have now been stained with violence and tarnished by hate.
Hate used to be ‘over there’ somewhere; Nazi Germany, the Armenian genocide, Srebrenica, Abu Ghraib. Now it’s all around us like a tumour that’s metastasizing, a cancer without a cure. In 2010, Canadian police investigated 1,401 ‘criminal incidents motivated by hate’. In 2020, that number was 2,669. Most hate crimes go unreported.
Every newspaper today carries more stories of our Indigenous peoples being beaten and abused and treated like “savages” by their white, European oppressors. That’s us, three generations later.
Every time I pass a truck or a house with a “F–k Trudeau” sign, I wonder why that person has not been charged with public obscenity and fined $5,000. Criminal Code (R.S.C., 1985C.c-46). Honestly, it’s on the books.
No one is born to hate. It’s learned from family, friends and now, social media. It can only be ‘unlearned’ by education, factual knowledge and tolerance of others. ‘Others’ are really ‘us’ with a different look. All of us are immigrants. The place for society to exist in peace is the center of common good, not around the fringes of racism and radicalism. Soon, if we don’t reverse this trend of racial hostility that’s gripping Canada, the center will not hold. It seems like only a decade ago we were evolving nicely and naturally from tribes to mosaics and melting pots. Now we’re headed back to a caste system based on ignorance, intolerance and hate. Where’s our Nelson Mandela when we desperately need him?
For a comment or a signed copy of any of humour columnist William Thomas’s books, email: williamjthomas@gmail.com